If you think success is a one step process . . . think again.  The objective in building a Champion Team is to identify the steps and apply them in the proper order.  You must have both the steps and the order correct.  The right steps in the wrong order will leave you well short of the success you desire.

Stage 1 – You

Stage 2 – You and your first assistant

Stage 3 – You and closing coordinator and listing coordinator

Stage 4 – You and closing coordinator and listing coordinator and buyer’s agent

Stage 5 – You and closing coordinator and listing coordinator and multiple buyer’s agents and field coordinator

Stage 6 – You and closing coordinator and listing coordinator and multiple buyer’s agents and field coordinator and lead manager

Stage 7 – You and closing coordinator and listing coordinator and multiple buyer’s agents and head buyer’s agent and field coordinator and lead manager

Stage 8 – All of the above and Chief Operating Officer

I really believe you can’t deviate from this order until after you pass stage 5.  You can add additional buyer’s agents between stages four and five, but you must not change the structure until you hit stage 5.

Don’t get the cart before the horse

The biggest adjustment most agents make is adding buyer’s agents before they have administrative help.  I guarantee you will see significant consequences for that error.  Your service to the clients will be sub-standard.  Your time invested in closing their transactions, even if they are an experienced agent, will be needed.  The relationship with the client will still be with the buyer’s agent, not the team.  When they decide to leave, the clients they have worked with will leave with them.  The reason is there really wasn’t a team at all that serviced them.

If you reduced your production in the short run to help your buyer’s agent and only received a fraction of the gross fee, you didn’t secure the long-term client . . . didn’t get the cart in front of the horse.  A great administrative assistant is the horse of your practice.

If you build it, the sales will come

I know that first extra mouth to feed is scary.  To have another person or family to be responsible for, who is counting on your production for their livelihood, is an awesome burden.  I understand how scary that position is as an agent and business owner.  In more than twenty years of having an entrepreneurial sales business, I have never had to lay anyone off because of slow sales.  I didn’t want to do that to the people and families that rely on me and my companies.  I have certainly fired people for non-performance, but I haven’t ever had to lay anyone off.

The first time you hire and start paying someone a base salary out of a 100% commission job, it will scare you to death.  When you have to pay them and forgo your paycheck this pay period, you will want to go back to the comfort of no assistant.  The best way to solve this is to increase your time in direct income producing activities.  Increase your time in prospecting and especially in lead follow-up.  When your cash flow is low, you need to respond quickly to this order.

1.      Aggressive action on price reductions

You won’t ever be able to keep a good listing a secret.  Make sure you have good listings – get the price down.  The shortest line between a commission check and you is a price reduction.

2.      Sell your committed buyer a home

Anyone who is committed to you exclusively who hasn’t bought yet and is reasonable in their expectations needs you to find them a house.  Take them out more frequently and get them in a home now.  With either step one or step two, you could be cashing a commission check in thirty days.

3.      Go through all of your leads

Call all of the leads (even older or longer time frame ones) and book appointments with them.  One of the fastest ways to take care of short-term cash flow is to go to your leads.  They are the third closest clients and prospects to a commission check.  Be sure you have left no rock un-turned with your desire to convert, commit, and build a high level of urgency in the leads in your database.  Don’t forget there is a direct link between motivation and time frame.

4.      Increase your prospecting

When you increase your number of contacts, you will increase the volume of leads.  Some of the leads that you create will be now leads, and some will be long-term leads.  The source you select to prospect will have a strong influence on the time line and urgency of the leads.  You will more likely gain long-term leads from prospecting your sphere and past clients.  You will receive short time frame leads with a higher level of urgency when you prospect FSBOs or expires, for example.  This is due to the motivation level difference of these groups.

Avoiding the major mistakes of building out of order

The most common out of order mistake agents make is adding producing assistants like buyer’s agents before they add support staff.  When this happens, the lead agent is forced to train, manage, and coach someone to a reasonable level of productivity while still trying to do all of the facets of their own production.  When the buyer’s agent makes a sale, it creates even more administration the lead agent must take on, as well.  The problem is their administration tasks are usually worth half the money.  It’s worth the money because the other half is going to the buyer’s agent.  You will end up doing most of the administrative work to close the deal for only half the normal fee.  Their efficiency model is blown up, net profit is demolished, hourly pay is reduced, and prospecting ceases.  All these things add up to disaster in their business.

Champion Team Rule – If you are spending more than 50% of your time in administration, you probably don’t have enough administrative help.

We don’t want too many people because it causes too much in the management arena. 

Based on my years of experience, the tendency for agents is to run too lean on staff rather than too heavy.  Check your allocation of time.  That will tell you if it’s time to add staff.

I meet many agents who have been thinking of adding a staff member for years and have never done it.  It’s as if they are waiting for the perfect situation or perfect person to walk up, bonk them on the head, and say, “Here I am!”  You will never act on your desire or find someone outstanding with that philosophy.

If you have been evaluating building a team or adding to your existing team for more than six months, it’s time to act.  A decision is in order . . . now.  The biggest waste of time in life is from the moment you know that a decision needs to be made to when you actually do it – when you act and move into action with that decision.  The span of time that we waste in knowing and non-action kills too many people’s success – don’t let it kill yours.

Your systems, processes, procedures, checklists, and other support structures for your business will never be perfect.  You will never get it dialed, so there will be zero changes in the future.  If you aren’t changing, you aren’t growing, improving, and staying ahead of the competition. 

Establishing your business vision, organizational chart, hiring and monitoring practices, checklists, time schedules, task lists, and team communication systems is enough to create a solid foundation to start the team building process.